When We Were Young - An 80s And 90s Pop Culture Podcast

Becky, Chris and Seth wanted to pull out the big scares this Halloween season, and what's scarier than being adored? Join us as we take a look back at MISERY (1990), director Rob Reiner's first (and only) foray into horror. This film gave us Kathy Bates — and gave Kathy Bates an Oscar — and introduced the term "hobbling" to millions of horrified moviegoers. In this episode, we discuss whether iconic movie villain Annie Wilkes had an influence on Hollywood's leading ladies breaking bland and embracing frumpiness, and if James Caan was the best choice for the role of Stephen King stand-in/author Paul Sheldon. We also share the artists we believe we're the number one fans of, who we promise we will not imprison in our homes. Follow When We Were Young on Twitter and Instagram at @WWWYshow, on Facebook at Facebook.com/WWWYShow and email episode suggestions to wwwyshow@gmail.com. Don’t forget to subscribe and review us on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts (or wherever you get your podcasts) so

Oh, you thought we were done talking about all the creepy-crawlies that go bump in the night, that slither in wait hoping to swallow you whole, and that can somehow turn on a gas oven using a dorsal fin? Hardly! In this dazzling, toothsome, and scaly finale to When We Were Young’s ‘90s Creature Feature extravaganza, Chris and Seth revisit three more hit movies that represent the monstrous tail end of this genre’s heyday. First, they were pretty sure the end was near when their boat sank in the jungles of the Amazon River and they were nearly swallowed whole by an immense ANACONDA (1997), but they were saved at the last moment by a documentary film crew led by JLo, Ice Cube, and an indecipherable but legendary Jon Voight. Hoping to find respite and relief in the calm waters of LAKE PLACID (1999), they instead found Betty White raising a world-record killer crocodile, and Bridget Fonda, Bill Pullman, and Oliver Platt competing to see who'd had the most severed heads flung at them. Finally,

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the '90s, an elite team of podcasters has been selected to journey deep into the jungle, dive deep into the ocean, and dig deep underground to locate some of the deadliest predators ever known to moviedom. Two of cinema’s greatest auteurs made creature features that have gone down as classics - Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS in the '60s and Spielberg’s Jaws in the '70s. In their wake, however, the genre known as “nature horror” took a steep downhill turn into low-budget schlock, and sadly creature features became an endangered species. But for a brief, beautiful window during the 1990s, movies about hungry, hungry critters great and small came roaring back! The genre flirted with becoming mainstream again, nabbing bigger budgets, bigger stars, and monster-sized box office receipts (in some cases). So welcome to Part One of our '90s Creature Sexa-Feature! (“Sex” as in “six.” Get your mind out of the gutter - there might be alligators down there!) In t

If you thought we had just one bun in the oven for our lineup of Arnold Schwarzenegger comedies about birth and child-rearing - surprise! This topic is actually twins! In our previous episode, we cooed over 1988’s Twins, in which Schwarzenegger popped his cherry as a humorous leading man and wowed us with his lack of vanity in getting laughs. In this episode, we carry our “Schwarzepreggers” topic to term, seeing if Arnold’s final two collaborations with Ivan Reitman are what we’re expecting - and if they still deliver. In KINDERGARTEN COP (1990) Arnold stars as Detective John Kimble, a grim cop who learns that the only way to bust a drug dealer is to go undercover as a kindergarten teacher. (Don’t ask.) There’s plenty of deception, betrayal, yelling at children, gunplay on school grounds, and even a feral ferret - but are the laughs here, or absent? This bizarre blend of kiddie hijinks and deadly police drama just might have to stay after class.  Then, Arnold teams back up with Reitman an

Arnold Schwarzenegger became world famous in the 1980s as the jacked-up star of macho blockbusters like CONAN THE BARBARIAN, PREDATOR, COMMANDO, and THE TERMINATOR. But in the late 80s and early 90s, he teamed up with GHOSTBUSTERS director Ivan Reitman for a trio of family-friendly comedies, starting with 1988’s TWINS. Schwarzenegger’s comic chemistry with Danny DeVito drove this broad, fairly inexpensive studio comedy to rake in over $200 million and become the fifth-biggest earner at the box office that year, proving Arnold’s ability to draw big crowds outside the action genre and paving the way for several more seminal turns in blockbuster comedies. In this episode of the podcast, we look back at Arnold’s austere Austrian childhood and the 1977 documentary PUMPING IRON, which chronicles the bodybuilding championships that first catapulted him to worldwide renown (and also chronicles his orgasmic workouts). Then, we check back in on TWINS and see whether this beloved 80s comedy still has us laughing

If you were a '90s kid, chances are you wanted just two things in life: for Nick to take over your school, and a spot saved for you on the big orange couch synonymous with SNICK. Nickelodeon's Saturday night programming block for pre-teens launched in 1992 and became an instant hit with the demographic who was still awake at 8pm but had nowhere to go. Now that we're all grown up, is there anything worth revisiting in any of the many shows that graced the SNICK lineup? Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, we take a look back at CLARISSA EXPLAINS IT ALL, ALL THAT, ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK?, THE SECRET WORLD OF ALEX MACK, ROUNDHOUSE, THE ADVENTURES OF PETE & PETE, and some of the other shows that made us feel like we finally had something to do on a Saturday night. Plus, we try and figure out why Super Soakers had such a monopoly on children's advertising in the '90s. Follow When We Were Young on Twitter and Instagram at @WWWYshow, on Facebook at Facebook.com/WWWYShow and em

You know the score. You know the quotes. You know the poster. Forty years ago, a wrinkly alien with a magic touch waddled into moviegoers’ hearts and made E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL one of the most beloved family films ever made. Steven Spielberg’s alien opus surpassed STAR WARS as the #1 film of all time and remained the biggest hit in a decade that also saw the release of GHOSTBUSTERS, BACK TO THE FUTURE, the INDIANA JONES trilogy, and BATMAN. It also delighted critics and audiences alike, spawning toys, video games, and one of Universal Studios’ most memorable rides. In short, E.T. was everywhere in the 80s.  In this episode of the podcast, When We Were Young takes you back to Spielberg’s childhood, chronicling his rise from suburban nerd to world’s most popular filmmaker. Then we chat about CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, Spielberg’s first foray to the friendly skies, which offers a surprisingly dark vision of one man’s life-shattering obsession with the unknown. Then it’s on to “the Summ

In Part 1 of our look back at MTV's The Real World, we were impressed with how quickly the show defined the tone, format, and style that reality television would use for the next thirty years (and counting). But it was the show’s third season, with the infamous slob Puck facing off against courageous AIDS activist Pedro, that made The Real World a real sensation, ushering in a wave of reality shows at the turn of the millennium that hasn’t died down since. (Listen to Part 1 here if you haven't caught up: https://themfp.org/wwwy-105-mtv-real-world-1/) For Part 2, we look back at that groundbreaking (and heartbreaking) San Francisco-set season, which aired in 1994. Then we fast forward to one of the show’s other major scandals and reveal who we side with regarding the infamous Seattle Slap. Finally, we revisit personal favorite Real World seasons from our teen years and talk about the cast members who made the biggest impressions on us. As The Real World turns 30 this May - and is therefore

What do RuPaul, Guy Fieri, Jennifer Hudson, Ozzy Osbourne, Honey Boo Boo, and the Kardashians have in common? They all owe a debt of gratitude to MTV’s THE REAL WORLD, which popularized the tone, format, and style most reality shows still adhere to today. In 1992, a show that followed regular people in their ordinary lives was groundbreaking. So extraordinary, in fact, that many contemporary critics thought reality television was a laughable fad aimed exclusively at brainless teens. The Real World’s first season, set in a New York City loft, got the formula down surprisingly quick, featuring all the partying, pranks, and heated debates we came to expect from the series in later years. For this podcast, Chris, Seth, and Becky reminisce about their own experiences "being taped," discuss their memories of the reality TV boom that blew up right around the millennium, then check out The Real World’s most memorable - AKA most notorious - episodes in honor of the show’s 30th anniversary. This era of th

McDonalds, TV pilots, Elvis, and foot massages - just the usual topics of conversation between gangsters, drug users, hitmen, and criminals, at least in Quentin Tarantino's world. The release of the writer/director's heavily-lauded PULP FICTION in 1994 was a groundbreaking moment for both Tarantino and movies, and its pop culture-obsessed characters and narrative-jumbling structure influenced the next decade or so of cinema (for better or worse). Do Pulp Fiction's accolades remain as bright and shiny as whatever's in that briefcase? Or are we right in striking down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger? Join us for an expletive-filled adventure back to the '90s - seriously, make the kiddos cover their ears for this one. This is Part 2 of our Tarantino-thon! Listen to Part 1 where we revisited NATURAL BORN KILLERS and RESERVOIR DOGS here: https://themfp.org/wwwy-103-naturalbornkillers/ Follow When We Were Young on Twitter and Instagram at @WWWYshow, on Facebook at Face

Hollywood got a double dose of ultraviolence in 1994 with the release of not one but two postmodern, blood-soaked meditations on pop culture and the media from a new and exciting filmmaker named Quentin Tarantino. The first of these, NATURAL BORN KILLERS, directed by Oliver Stone, was so controversial at the time that Tarantino himself disavowed it (along with a sizeable portion of moviegoers and critics). Nearly 30 years after its release, there's still a lot to discuss and debate about Mickey and Mallory and whether its satiric and satanic take on the media remains relevant. There's also quite a lot to say about the eccentric writer/director's pre-1994 films TRUE ROMANCE and RESERVOIR DOGS, as well as his influence on '90s cinema as a whole. That's why this is just Part 1 of our Tarantino deep-dive—so make sure you tune in for our talk on his arguable (and yes, we do argue) masterpiece PULP FICTION in Part 2! Follow When We Were Young on Twitter and Instagram at @WWWYshow,

Sometimes, iconic characters from a movie become pop culture references that outlast and outshine the movie itself. Sometimes, you’d rent a movie at Blockbuster based on the cover alone. And sometimes, ambitious white women in ancient Egypt or “Hauptmann-Koenig” time travel and teleport into beautiful mannequins in a department store in Philly! In 1987 and 1991, that sometimes and those iconic characters were the namesakes of MANNEQUIN and MANNEQUIN TWO: ON THE MOVE. Whether in the role played by Kim Cattrall in the first outing (playing an Egyptian character - in ancient Egypt) or by Kristy Swanson in the sequel, the female lead of this well-known franchise is a woman hopelessly trapped in a department store window mannequin until a hapless and bumbling (but secretly talented!) handsome guy named Jonathan or Jason arrives to become her instant true love and render the force of life into her immobile body. Cue the instantly-iconic Starship power ballad "Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now" and the inevitable w

As we discussed in our 100th episode, L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz delighted generation after generation of children, and MGM’s 1939 musical adaptation became one of the most popular and cherished motion pictures of all time. So it’s only natural that in the '80s, Disney decided to pay tribute to these Oz classics in a family film that puts Dorothy in an insane asylum and turns her beloved trio of friends to stone... right? With a surprisingly dark storyline and truly frightening special effects, it’s no wonder 1985’s RETURN TO OZ scared the hell out of more children than it charmed. (Surprise! It wasn’t a hit.) Disney’s pseudo-sequel to a film that everybody knows and loves is largely forgotten, but that doesn’t stop When We Were Young’s hosts from checking back in with the many-headed Princess Mombi, the sinister but fabulous Nome King, and the kooky, cackling Wheelers. Fortunately, young Fairuza Balk and a handful of lovable new comrades, including Tik-Tok, Jack Pumpkinhead, and a sass

Surrender, Dorothy! For the 100th episode of When We Were Young, Seth, Becky, Chris and returning guest host Jan have clicked their heels together three times and summoned a twister to whisk them all the way back to 1939, when the ultimate Hollywood classic landed on the big screen in glorious Technicolor. Watching THE WIZARD OF OZ has been a childhood rite of passage for several generations now, its characters and quotable dialogue known to just about every man, woman, and child this side of Munchkinland. But does the film itself still have the brains, heart, and nerve to dazzle discerning modern day viewers? First, Oz aficionado Chris recounts his history with the original fantasy series by L. Frank Baum, which is much more robust than you might think. Then, strap on some sparkly slippers and skip down the yellow brick road with us once again as we revisit the classic film — going gaga over Toto, debating the best and worst tracks from the iconic soundtrack, and marveling at the film’s unforgettable

When We Were Young's Tom Cruise double-feature sets sail on what might be the movie star's ultimate role, the titular charming and conflicted sports agent of Cameron Crowe's JERRY MAGUIRE. This 1996 romantic drama made a star out of Renee Zellweger and Cuba Gooding Jr. (the latter winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor) and cemented Cruise's status as Hollywood's go-to leading man with his record-breaking fifth $100-million-plus-earning feature. Decades later, does Cruise's performance still complete us? Does the film have us at "Hello?" Do the script's seemingly endless quotable moments, er, show us the money? (Sorry.) Join us on the final stop of our Cruise down memory lane, with a pit stop discussing the actor's other notable 1996 entry, "Mission: Impossible." Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @WWWYshow, on Facebook at Facebook.com/WWWYShow and email episode suggestions to wwwyshow@gmail.com. Don’t forget to subscribe and review us on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts so more

Do you feel the need? The need to speed back to the 80s and bro out with Iceman, Wolfman, Slider, Viper, Goose, and Maverick all over again? If so, you'll love Part One of our cruise through the career of the galaxy’s biggest superstar (don’t tell Xenu), starting with the 1986 blockbuster that first catapulted him to worldwide fame - TOP GUN. The name “Tom Cruise” may be synonymous with movie stardom now, but back in 1986, he was still best known for his undie-baring breakout in the teen sex comedy RISKY BUSINESS, so having him headline an action-packed military drama was a bit of a gamble. Of course, Top Gun ended up topping all expectations, becoming the year’s highest-grossing film, launching a killer soundtrack, winning an Academy Award for the soaring romantic ballad “Take My Breath Away,” and cementing its place in history as one of the most iconic 80s movies. Now, as Top Gun approaches its 35th anniversary with a long-awaited sequel on the horizon, it’s time to find out whether these boys

In our latest episode, we answer the existential question that has plagued mankind for centuries: Who you gonna call? Join us as we take a look back at Ivan Reitman's groundbreaking action-comedy GHOSTBUSTERS (1984) and its spooky, silly sequel GHOSTBUSTERS II (1988). The film that launched a thousand merchandise opportunities, "Ghostbusters" began as something VERY different in the mind of co-writer and co-star Dan Aykroyd and ended up being one of the most successful movie franchises of all time. Nearly 40 years after the original film's debut, does "Ghostbusters" stand proudly like the Statue of Liberty strolling through the streets of Manhattan? Or is it more like a river of slime? We've got some unfinished business with Peter, Ray, and Egon - and, unlike the movie, we don't forget Winston. We ain't afraid of no ghosts… but we are a little anxious about incurring the wrath of Ghostbusters loyalists with our critique of these beloved films. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram

If you’re a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, a magic bean buyer, or you just hate doing dishes and taking the garbage out, you’ll surely find something to relate to in our episode on celebrated author, illustrator, poet, and all-around Renaissance Man Shel Silverstein. Though WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS was first published in 1974, long before we were even born, Silverstein’s groundbreaking poetry collection was a staple in classrooms, on library shelves, and at bedtime throughout our childhoods, along with later volumes A LIGHT IN THE ATTIC and FALLING UP. Award-winning author Elissa Brent Weissman joins us for a look at how writing for young readers has changed in the decades since we were young readers ourselves. Then we discuss Uncle Shelby’s salacious origins (far outside the realm of children’s fiction) and have a heated debate about what his massively popular children’s book THE GIVING TREE is really about. Finally, we dive back into Silverstein’s poetry to share which pieces still strike a chord w

If you're nostalgic for the summers of your youth, there's a chance you're likely also pining for the first time you watched MY GIRL (1991) and MY GIRL 2 (1994). In When We Were Young's Manic My Girl Monday episode, we discuss the surprising lack of child-friendly drama flicks and reflect on how we spent our summer breaks as kids before launching into our discussion of the movie that made children and adults everywhere break down in tears. Does the coming-of-age story of Vada Sultenfuss (Anna Chlumsky) and her beloved bespectacled bee-inflicted best friend Thomas J. (Macaulay Culkin) still turn on the waterworks, or does it just not work? How many of you older millennials are crying right now just thinking of Vada bawling, "He can't see without his glasses!"? Be honest! Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @WWWYshow, on Facebook at Facebook.com/WWWYShow and email episode suggestions to wwwyshow@gmail.com. Don’t forget to subscribe and review us on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts so more folk

It's Part Two of (deep breath) the When We Were Young Early Late Mid-to-Late 90s Summer Alien Invasion Spectacular, taking on the top alien flicks to invade 1997! In our latest episode, here come the MEN IN BLACK (clap clap), Barry Sonnenfeld's massively successful action-comedy starring Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, and a slew of Oscar-worthy makeup effects. We also take a look back at Robert Zemeckis's metaphysical and emotional drama CONTACT, which launched Jodie Foster into space to meet a very different kind of alien. (Or did it?!) Despite being released at the peak of UFO mania in the 1990s, these films could not be more different. Jump on our spaceship as we fly through a wormhole back to 1997 to decide if the Men in Black still make the summer blockbuster look good, or if we'd rather make contact with a movie adapted from an astrophysicist's book. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @WWWYshow, on Facebook at Facebook.com/WWWYShow and email episode suggestions to wwwyshow@gmail.c